Greg Hands: Will the Secretary of State join me in condemning as obscene and irresponsible the proposed six days of tube strikes by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers next month over only two individual employees? Will he also condemn Labour’s candidate for London Mayor, who has singularly failed to condemn the action, and, indeed, his deputy, who even appears at RMT protest meetings?

Steven Baker: Wycombe air park will be subject to various security requirements in connection with the Olympics. I learned this week that those arrangements will threaten the survival of Booker gliding club. Will the Minister meet with me to try to find a way forward for that valued resource?

Lynne Featherstone: I thank the hon. Gentleman for highlighting the importance of getting that message out. I am happy to talk with the Metropolitan police, as there is indeed a great deal of under-reporting. There are certain sectors that lack knowledge or understanding of how or where to make reports. The police have set up a website called True Vision—just Google “hate crime” and “how to report”—because the internet makes hate crime much easier to report where there is that lack of accessibility.

New Businesses (Women)

Employment (Women)

Margaret Beckett: Does the Minister recognise that decisions made by local councils like the Tory one in Derby to close Sure Start projects is another example of where women are losing out and finding their opportunities for employment much diminished?

State Pensions (Women)

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that reply, and I welcome the further foreign affairs debate that we are going to have.
	The House will be aware that heath and forest fires are affecting a number of parts of the UK so, as well as thanking those who are working so hard to contain them, does the Leader of the House anticipate a statement? On the length of this Session, he was uncharacteristically dismissive in responding to my question last week about when it will conclude. Previously the House has always had a pretty good idea when the next Queen’s Speech would be, so may I urge him again to let us know as soon as he has worked it out?
	At business questions last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) asked about the comments made last autumn by Baroness Warsi about the general election. Let me remind the House that she said that there were
	“At least three seats where we lost....based on electoral fraud.”
	When asked to identify the seats, she replied:
	“I think it would be wrong to start identifying them”.
	The Leader of the House said that my right hon. Friend had received a “reply” to those allegations from the appropriate Minister. I have read the letter and it does not give one, and my right hon. Friend has now written to both that Minister and the Leader of the House to seek a proper response. However, given that a member of the Cabinet has made an accusation of electoral fraud, can the Leader of the House confirm for us today that Baroness Warsi has passed, either to the Electoral Commission or to the police, the information that she must have had to have made those very serious allegations in the first place?
	May we have a statement on the role of OFFA—the Office for Fair Access—in respect of the setting of university fees? Last weekend its assistant director was very clear. He said:
	“We are not a fee pricing regulator; that is not our role...we wouldn’t say to an institution we would only allow a fee of ‘X’ or ‘Y’”.
	That statement completely contradicted what the Prime Minister told the House on 30 March, which was that
	“the Office for Fair Access will decide whether universities can go to that £9,000 threshold.”—[Official Report, 30 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 334.]
	Now that this has come to light, when will the Prime Minister come to the House to apologise for giving Members incorrect information about the powers of OFFA?
	May we have a debate on the breakdown of collective Cabinet responsibility? After his threat to sue ministerial colleagues last week, we read that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change this week used the Cabinet meeting to launch a blistering personal attack on the Prime Minister over the content of the no campaign leaflets. He also said this over the weekend:
	“To attack your political colleagues in a coalition...for accepting the compromises necessary to allow the Conservatives to implement some of its policies is...outrageous.”
	Well, where exactly do we start on that? First, it makes it sound as if the Lib Dems are helpless victims, rather than willing participants. If, however, that is the case, can we have a list so that we know who to blame in future and for what? Secondly, a Cabinet Minister was openly criticising the man who appointed him and it appears that the occupant of No. 10 is completely powerless to do anything about it. I wonder whether the Prime Minister feels that the most annoying man in British politics is now, in fact, the Climate Change Secretary?
	Thirdly, we now have no idea who now speaks for the Government, so can we have statements on the following matters: is the Health and Social Care Bill in suspension or not, and if so, for how long? Does the Prime Minister agree with the Deputy Prime Minister’s comment this week that piloting the idea of police commissioners would be “entirely rational”? What exactly is the Government’s policy on the outsourcing of public services? First we were told that that was the future; now we read in a leaked document this week that they are pulling back because it would be politically “unpalatable”? Who is right about internships and family friends? On Tuesday the Deputy Prime Minister told the “Today” programme that Government policy is to end informal
	internships, yet on the very same programme his boss, the Prime Minister, contradicted him, saying that he has his neighbour coming in for an internship.
	As we approach the first anniversary of the coalition, is not the truth that it is already beginning to fray at the edges as both partners realise that a marriage of convenience is no substitute for voting for what you believe in? And on that subject, may I tell the Leader of the House that many people are looking forward to voting for a Labour alternative to this shabby coalition today?

Denis MacShane: I do not know whether you, Mr Speaker, or the Leader of the House have received this extraordinarily impertinent letter from the Speaker of the Libyan Parliament, saying that there is a clear process of political reform and social development under Colonel Gaddafi and that we as MPs should all support it. That will be discussed in the foreign affairs debate, which I welcome, but will the motion be amendable, so that House can consider seriously the views of those of us who think the time has come to
	put an end to the sacrifice of British soldiers in Afghanistan, particularly following the welcome disappearance of Osama bin Laden?

Mark Field: I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman, but does he also recognise—I see it particularly in my constituency and other inner-London areas—the importance of what has been done by many philanthropists, the most obvious of which is the Peabody Trust, whose house building and flat building programmes have stood the test of time? They remain some of the most exciting and sought-after social housing in many of our constituencies, 120 or 130 years after they were first built.

Jeremy Corbyn: It seems a sad reflection on the great revolutions of 1848 that we should expunge them on the altar of the housing market in 2011. I shall return to council housing in a moment.
	There were consistent campaigns and demands for security of tenure for people beyond council housing. Council housing has traditionally provided the most secure form of affordable tenancy and has provided for effective, stable communities. I commend those councils—I choose Camden because my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras was leader of the council—who did a high level of building when they were able to. They also adopted a planning policy that has ensured that there are stable, mixed communities stretching right into the Camden part of central London—working-class communities alongside the business areas of central London. We should be proud of that record in this city, and I would like to see it reflected in all parts of London. The same does not apply in the case of Kensington and Chelsea and—I hesitate to say it with the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) present—in Westminster where the policies have been different. I think one should commend boroughs like Camden.

Andrew Love: My hon. Friend mentioned 1979, which has a resonance for many of us, because it was the year in which Mrs Thatcher was elected. If we look at the history books, in 1980, she made massive cuts to housing investment programme capital funding. Does that have anything to do with the problems suggested by my hon. Friend?

Mark Field: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He is making a thoughtful speech, and I hope that he will forgive me if I return to a point that he made earlier and the general thrust of his concern about the private rented sector. Does he share my worry that one of the difficulties in housing policy, going back to the institution of rent Acts in the first world war, is that too often it has just been an Elastoplast in trying to solve the most recent problem, which has been looked at in a small way? Does he have any thoughts about the huge explosion in the buy-to-let market, which is one reason why there has been an enormous increase in the private rented sector in his constituency? Because London is a global capital, a huge amount of foreign money is coming in to buy up
	large blocks of flats and other properties. Do we need to look at that, and what suggestions can he make about the way forward?

Jeremy Corbyn: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the way in which he has represented his constituency and pointed out what the council in Hammersmith and Fulham is doing, and what he is trying to do to meet the needs of people who are in desperate housing need.
	I come back to the issue of people on housing waiting lists. What is the route for a homeless family, or a concealed homeless or about-to-be-evicted homeless family, in an inner-London borough, or probably any other London borough? If they go to the council and present themselves as homeless, they will probably get a hostel place. Hostels are grim places and have a devastating effect on the psychology and well-being of children who go into them. If they are there for a long time, it is an awful experience. If they knew it was for one, two, three weeks or a month, and that at the end of that they would have a secure council flat, that would probably be bearable. But if they are there for six months or longer and are told that the only pathway out is to go into private rented accommodation, and they ask me as their MP whether to accept that, I have to say that they must, because if they do not the council will have absolved itself of its responsibility to them.
	A member of that family will say, “But Jeremy, housing benefit will have to pay this huge rent, and that means I can’t get a job, otherwise I will lose the housing benefit.” They are moving into the most awful bind. Quite often they are placed in flats in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton—no reflection on him; quite the opposite—and they then come and tell me what the flat is like: slum landlord, inefficient heating, badly maintained, possibly vermin infested. They can get no redress from the landlord because the landlord knows for certain that there will be no problem in renting it again through an agency. We report the matter to the local authority but this can go on for years. They move from one private rented property to another until, perhaps five or 10 years down the line, they achieve the gold medal of a council flat. That is a lifetime for a child. They will move primary schools several times, lose their friends and social contacts, their
	youth club and their networks. That is what is happening to dozens and dozens of children and families all over the city at this time.
	I ask the Government: please think through what is happening. Think of the desire for somewhere safe and secure to live. Think of the housing benefit that is being wasted in excessive rents to private landlords, and allow local authorities to do what the old London county council, the Greater London council, and lots of London boroughs of all political parties did, which was to invest in good-quality bricks and mortar of secure housing for people to live in, which they could call their own home and know is their own home. That is what brings about stability in communities. The alternative leads to underachievement, homelessness, crime and the misery of unsustainable communities.
	I do not call such building a waste. I listen with interest when building workers tell me that they are being laid off because there is nothing for them to do. There is a housing crisis out there that can be solved by the building of new properties that can put those people to good work and solve the social problems at the same time. London is crying out for a socially responsible approach to housing. Do not leave it all to the market. The market is what created the problem in the first place.

Jim Fitzpatrick: My right hon. Friend is making a strong start to what clearly will be an important contribution to this debate. I entirely accept what she and my hon.
	Friend the Member for North (Jeremy Corbyn) said about the invisibility of house building to the Administrations of which we were a part. However, the Labour Government inherited 2 million homes below the decency threshold. Does she not give them credit for recognising that that was an absolute priority and for the good work done in that aspect of housing, which was very important, particularly for thousands of homes in Tower Hamlets?

Jeremy Corbyn: Every borough has a duty to deal with homelessness, but although there are usually charities that deal with people who are sleeping rough, is my right hon. Friend aware that the number of rough sleepers and people sleeping in parks or on park benches in London is increasing dramatically? I fear that we are looking again at the misery of the 1980s, when there were all those cardboard boxes.

Joan Ruddock: I agree with my hon. Friend. He uses the term “rough sleepers”, but we should bear in mind that those are often people with a multiplicity of problems in addition to their housing need. They need special programmes, special treatment and special care—provision that the Labour Government made available, reducing the number of people on the streets with additional problems so dramatically.
	My greatest fear is not just that those numbers will increase, but that ordinary families and single people who do not have additional problems will be affected. Their only problem will be that they have become homeless because of Government policies, and that there will ultimately be no means for local authorities to cope with the strains and stresses of trying to house homeless people. What will happen is that the acceptance criteria will become more stringent, and many people who do not meet them will end up on the street.
	However, I also have some hope that the people of London will not allow that to happen, but will apply sufficient pressure—through their local authorities and representatives, including Members of this House—to persuade this Government that however they thought up these policies, they must meet the test of practical experience, and that test shows that the market will not provide for the people of London. That is not to the shame of the people of London. It is not that they cannot earn their own living and pay their way—they can do all that—but they must have sufficient social housing provision in which conduct their lives.

Tom Brake: I am happy to give local authorities and others the powers to change the terms of tenure and I hope the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that there is an issue with some people having security of tenure who, from a financial point of view, could afford to live in their own accommodation or in the private sector. Perhaps Bob Crow springs to mind as one such example. By continuing to occupy council or social housing, those people are not making that accommodation available to others in greater need. The hon. Gentleman might not want to draw the line in the same place as me, but I hope he will acknowledge that it could be argued with considerable justification that people at the extremes should not have security of tenure in premises that could be more appropriately given to people in far greater need.
	A further point raised in the Centrepoint briefing was the issue of the uprating of the local housing allowance and the move towards basing it on the consumer prices index. It is argued that using the CPI figure could cost the Government money if there has been a drop in the rental markets locally. The Minister might want to look at that from a Government spending point of view.
	The final point in the briefing is the issue of direct payments. I fully support the concept that people should take more responsibility for their expenditure, so I have some reservations about paying money directly to landlords. Centrepoint’s view is there are circumstances—this might be particularly true for young people—where people might prefer to have the money paid directly to their landlord because they do not feel they are ready to take on that financial responsibility. Some flexibility there might help.
	My final point is not one that Centrepoint raised; it is about arm’s length management organisations and I would like the Minister to update us on his view of them. Other Members in their places may well, like me, be members of the all-party ALMOs group. Members will recall that when tenants were given an option to transfer to an ALMO, a consultation process had to be gone through. The concern of the all-party group is that the travel nowadays is in the opposite direction and that some local authorities are seeking, perhaps precipitately, to bring ALMOs or social housing back under their control without going through the anticipated process of consultation. I hope that when the Minister responds—or, if necessary, in writing—he will pick up on that point and let us know whether he has heard those concerns and raised them with local authorities, as it is
	important to ensure that tenants are given a fair outline of their options and are fully consulted about the process. They can then make a decision with the full facts in hand on whether they want the responsibility for the management of their properties brought back in house or to retain the ALMO.
	This is an important debate. I have been a Member for 14 years and I have spoken in about 25 debates on this subject during that time. It is a particularly critical issue in London. I do not believe that there is much difference between us about the need to tackle the problem, although there are big differences in approach. I hope that in the months and years to come, my Government will demonstrate by the measures we are introducing that we are tackling the problem, growing the amount of social housing available and starting to address what has proved to be a real dilemma for Londoners for the last 30 or 40 years.

Jeremy Corbyn: I should be grateful if my friend commented on the lack of democracy in the running of housing associations and the problems that that has created. When they were small, semi-co-operative organisations, there was a clear line of responsibility and accountability, but I do not perceive any accountability in the majority of housing associations now.

Clive Efford: I will in a moment. Calm down. [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members will notice that I was more restrained in my comment.
	Those people did not lack aspiration or exhibit all the problems that people have given as reasons for not investing in building social rented accommodation. We have lost sight of the issue. It has been suggested that such people lack aspiration and that such areas become concentrations of high unemployment, low educational attainment and high levels of crime, particularly antisocial behaviour among young people. Such circumstances become self-fulfilling prophecies as a result of people having to be housed according to priority need.
	Over the years, the housing supply has been constantly reducing. Because of the right to buy, the amount of social housing for rent went down consistently, in spite of the new building that was taking place, until only a couple of years before the previous Labour Government
	left office. The only time there was an increase was from about 2008 onwards as a result of the investment of the previous Labour Government. Just as we got to the end of our last term in office, we actually got it and finally started to invest in building again, and so the building of council housing began again. There were projects in my constituency and my local authority was successful in bidding for money to start to build council housing again. That is what we have to get back to. It will be no good the Minister’s coming to the Despatch Box and saying that it has all been bad under both Tory and Labour Governments. We have to get this right for future generations.
	We have heard about the flexibility of having 80% of market rents. To give them credit, many registered social landlords and housing associations are saying that going for 80% of market rents would fundamentally change their ethos. It would mean that they were no longer providers of social housing and they believe that they would be wrong to go down that route. To accept rents of 80% of market rents would be to accept the principle that people who live in social housing should subsidise the future development of social housing—that they should pay for it rather than the general taxpayer or anyone else. For many years, people buying private housing got enormous subsidies. A myth has built up that there are huge subsidies for council housing, but the housing revenue account has paid its own way for decades. Even my local authority, in its response to the consultation on social housing rents, made the mistake of believing that there was a cost to the taxpayer of providing social housing.
	It cannot be right, at a time when the Government have stated that they want to cut the housing benefit budget, to introduce a policy of moving social housing rents towards market levels. That has to be counterintuitive. The people who cannot afford to find rented housing in the private sector or to buy will, by the very nature of the problems they are facing in their lives at times of crisis when they search for social housing, be likely to get priority and be on lower incomes, so that policy is likely to have an impact on housing benefit if rents of 80% of market rents are encouraged. At the same time, the changes in housing allowances and the new 30th percentile rate will increase the amount that people will have to contribute to their rent if they are in the private rented sector. That will force many people who live in central London to move to areas such as mine where rents are lower, relatively. That is bound to increase the demand for housing there, which could have an impact on the private rented sector and, again, have a negative impact on rent levels if demand goes up. If the private rented sector refuses to rent to people on housing benefit, what will happen to those people and what will be the consequences for local social housing and the level of demand? How will the council deal with that?
	What the Government propose in their social housing strategy does not add up or make sense and will have very contradictory outcomes in many areas. The fundamental problem behind what we are dealing with is supply. Some hon. Members have argued that we should have flexible rents that change as people move through social housing and that people should move into the private sector as they gain employment and
	increase their income. I do not agree that people should be in social housing only at times when they have a low income and that they should be encouraged to move through the system. Such arguments about the management of social housing are to do with the fact that we are managing a limited supply of housing. That is the fundamental problem and we have to increase that supply.
	One issue with which we have faced problems in the past—successive Governments have been at fault in this regard as well—is the supply of land. We have put too many obstacles in the way of local authorities’ supplying land to build social housing. In fact, we have often put incentives in their way to dispose of it. We end up in the curious situation whereby local authority land is sold to a private developer for it to build a housing estate, so that we can try to get a residual amount of properties through that development for social housing under planning gain—usually through a housing association whose rents are higher than the local authority’s target rents. That is certainly the case in my area. That approach has failed to deliver the number of properties that we needed over the past two decades, and is a major contributory factor to the huge shortage of social housing in London.
	I do not blame private developers. They do what private developers do. They swim in the sea of regulations that we create for them. The profits that they can make from private developments—buying the land, developing it and selling it on—are absolutely huge. We have failed to tap into those profits to recycle resources and invest in future social housing. As a consequence of that policy, until only a few years ago we saw, effectively, a year-on-year reduction in the units of social housing available for rent. So we need to ensure that the land is made available, and that local authorities are encouraged and given incentives to make that land available for future developments.
	Where there have been developments they have often been of the wrong type, in which the properties are not available to local communities. Shelter did a study of eight local authority areas. One was Tower Hamlets, and although that is not my local authority the report makes very interesting reading. Between 2006 and 2010, 10,430 properties were built in Tower Hamlets. Barclays bank, whose headquarters is in Canary Wharf in Tower Hamlets, has just paid out over £1 billion in bonuses to its staff. I wonder what that £1 billion could have done for the 21,000 local people on the housing waiting list in Tower Hamlets if it had been invested in local housing.
	Of the houses that were built in the four years between 2006 and 2010, 8,500 were in the private sector and just under 2,000 were built by housing associations. None were local authority builds. Fifty-four per cent. of the properties in Tower Hamlets have been built since 1966, and yet there are 21,000 on the waiting list. There is a very high vacancy rate in the new-build properties in private ownership. So we have been building houses at a heck of a rate in Tower Hamlets, but we have not been building them to meet the housing crisis there. I am not attacking the local authority; I am not attacking anyone. As I have said, it simply highlights the fact that the policy is completely and utterly wrong.
	I have a development in my constituency, the Kidbrooke Regeneration. I visited some of the brand-new properties that had been built as the first phase of that development—
	beautiful properties. The price is £300,000 for a two-bedroom property overlooking one of my local parks. I asked who their target market was for those properties—who they expected to buy them. Was it local people living in big three or four-bedroom houses who were nearing retirement, whose children had moved on and who wanted to downsize to a comfortable flat? They said, “There may be one or two of those, but mainly we’re advertising abroad.” In that regeneration we have knocked down 1,900 local council properties. About 30% or 35% of the 4,400 properties will be social housing, provided through a housing association. Most of the private properties will be targeted at people who are not local.
	I am not attacking the developer; it works in the market that is out there, and is trying to maximise its profits, as any company would. However, clearly we need to look at how we encourage development, and who we encourage it for, if we are ever to deal with the lack of supply that is at the root of all the problems that we are debating today.

Clive Efford: I agree. Buy to let has not been the success that some thought it would be in providing rented accommodation and encouraging people to enter the private rented market; that idea has been consigned to the history books. I hope that we do not go back down that route again.
	We need to deal with the problem of the supply of social rented accommodation. I point out to the Minister, before he attacks the previous Mayor of London’s record, that thanks to the last Government’s subsidy, the number of affordable house-building starts in 2009-10 was 16,000. Last year that was down to just over 2,000. This year, 2011-12, the figure is 2,000. From 2012-13 it is zero. I do not know how the Minister will explain at the Dispatch Box how the Mayor of London will hit his 50,000 homes target without building a single home in 2012-13 or 2013-14—unless, that is, the Mayor moves a whole host of Bob Crows. [Interruption.] The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), is waving an informative graph at me; coincidentally, I happen to have a copy. It is from the Homes and Communities Agency, and she will no doubt refer to it in her speech. It officially confirms the figures that I gave; they come not from a Labour party press release, but from the Homes and Communities Agency. Boris has clearly failed in his objective and his promise to provide affordable housing for people in London.
	Another policy that we must confront is the one that Boris described as “ Kosovo-style social cleansing” when it was announced. I have never agreed with him more—but unfortunately, the following week he went on to say:
	“My consistent position has been that the government is absolutely right to reform the housing benefit system which has become completely unsustainable. I do not agree with the wild accusations from defenders of the current system that reform will lead to social cleansing.”
	Boris says one thing in front of a microphone when the policy is first announced, but he secretly makes those comments at a later date. When the matter is in the media and it is discussed on the 6 o’clock news he appears to stand up to the Government, but after he has been sat on by the Minister and everyone else, he sneaks out a press release a week later saying that he absolutely agrees with their policy—a policy that will result in people on low incomes being moved from large areas of inner London to places outside London where private sector rents are lower.
	There have been huge clearances of estates, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) will doubtless refer, as perfectly good council housing, in which millions of pounds has been invested under the decent homes programme, will be knocked down to make way for private luxury developments. The Conservatives just do not get it when it comes to housing. Surprisingly, the Liberal Democrats do not get it either. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made a point about how essential it is that people on low incomes should be able to live in mixed communities across the capital. During the earlier spell of cold weather, my local authority kept the roads clear so that people could get to work. I am sure that that was true, too, of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and other areas.
	There is affordable housing in those areas for people who do all sorts of jobs in the local economy, from driving refuse lorries to sweeping the roads and pushing trolleys in local hospitals or even cleaning floors in posh houses in the leafier parts of central London, but those people will have nowhere to live in those communities if
	the Government continue to pursue their policies. Those people will not be there to do jobs such as stacking shelves in supermarkets. They are an essential part of our local economy, but they will disappear from many of our communities. The biggest effect on the Tories will perhaps be that their cleaning costs will go up, because of the shortage of cleaners, pushing up the hourly rate.
	During the crisis in the freezing cold weather, many of us could get to work only because fairly low-paid people in local authorities across the capital got into work early in the morning, driving gritting lorries, clearing roads and so on, so that buses could run and other people could keep the economy moving. Those people are an essential part of our economy. I suspect that they will not qualify, even if they can afford it, for key worker schemes, to buy properties in those areas. They will be forced out by higher rents and the lack of housing benefit designed to support part-time workers who provide essential jobs such as child minding and caring and other roles. Under the policy, they just will not be there.
	Social housing is not just a benefit that is means-tested and provided by a welfare cheque. It is an essential part of our communities and economy. To get rid of it in large parts of the capital is a hugely retrograde step that we will all come to regret. Social housing is also essential not just for people on low incomes, but for those who aspire to buy their own homes. We know now that the house lending market has changed—probably for ever, but certainly for a long time. It will no longer be possible to gamble on the future value of a house to borrow 100% of its cost on the understanding that we know that it will be worth more in the future; 100% mortgages are a thing of the past. Any bank or building society will make it clear that no one is lending 100% mortgages any more, and they do not foresee that happening. That means that people will have to be savers for a long time before they can become home buyers. Even people in social housing who aspire to buy their own home will have to save for a long time.
	In a study published in October 2010, the Home Builders Federation came to the conclusion that
	“In London, first time buyers aged between 22 and 29 cannot pay their rent and save for a deposit—this would cost 10% more than their net monthly income.”
	It goes on to state:
	“The average deposit across the UK is 230% that of average salaries—almost 300% in London.”
	Even if people wanted to become home owners, if they are forced into the private rented sector they can never save enough money to do so. That tells us that affordable rented accommodation is not just about people on benefits or on low incomes, people who lack aspiration or are in a crisis in their lives, but is essential to the future of the housing market, particularly in London where deposits will be high. If we do not provide affordable housing at levels at which people who may aspire to become future home owners can reasonably be expected to save at a decent rate, we are undermining the future of our own housing market. To have a home construction industry in the future, we will be relying on developers of schemes, such as mine in Kidbrooke, where they sell to people not from the local community,
	not even from the UK, but to business people from abroad. That cannot be right. That is not right for the future of our city, and we should not encourage it.
	My final point concerns the social management of council rents and registered social landlord rents in order to create mixed communities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said, we have debated that for many years and it has never worked. When I grew up in rented accommodation in Southwark, surrounded by friends who all lived in rented accommodation, we had mixed communities. In those days, under a Labour Government, unemployment was not prevalent. Under the most recent Labour Government we increased employment enormously, and that is the policy that we need to return to, rather than the huge cuts that we see from this coalition Government.
	The idea that we cannot create mixed communities because we have social rented properties is something that we should put behind us and never return to. It is not a matter of the tenure, but the people who live there. If we provide employment, we provide mixed communities, whether Bob Crow lives there, the local GP or shop owner, or someone experiencing a temporary period of unemployment. We need a Government who are prepared to stand by people and help to create jobs in those communities and invest in them in order to ensure that we do have mixed communities. They will not be created by flexible rents and social engineering.

Andy Slaughter: My hon. Friend has made an important point. I do not believe that the Government now believe their own rhetoric on mixed communities. The estates that Conservative councils are demolishing are mixed communities; mixed communities are made up of rented, owned, freehold and leasehold properties, with mixed income levels. Those estates are being replaced with not mixed communities, but exactly what my hon. Friend described—ghettoes of the rich. They are properties that are advertised abroad or go for prices far above what ordinary families can afford. That is the future for housing in London. “Mixed communities”—

Heidi Alexander: It does not, which is partly why I am making this speech in the House.
	When Boris Johnson stands there and looks proudly at new homes, I feel like saying to him, and to the public, “Those new homes are a result of the Labour Government’s investment in housing. They are a direct result of the national affordable house building programme.”
	I have been involved in regeneration and attempts to build new homes in Lewisham for a number of years, and I know how long it takes to get new developments off the ground. Any homes that are being built at the moment probably went through the planning process three or four years ago, and the commercial viability of the scheme was probably assessed and agreed three or four years ago. For Boris Johnson to stand there and claim this as his victory is entirely wrong. His record will relate to what happens in the years to come. As we have heard, the Homes and Communities Agency predicts that in a couple of years no new affordable housing will be being built in London. It will fall off a cliff face. Boris Johnson should bear in mind that that will be his legacy for London, not the legacy left by the last Labour Government.
	Another thing that I wish to say about my experience of trying to deliver regeneration in Lewisham is that no thanks are due to the Liberal and Tory councillors in this regard. As soon as there was the faintest whiff of local opposition to a new housing scheme, whether it was a private sector development or affordable housing, they generally chose to vote against it. Some of the plans in the Localism Bill will make it easier for some of those nimbys to block development. If we really are going to build more homes, we need to be thinking about how the planning system works.
	I have talked a little about the fact that the capital grant programme has been slashed and the Government seem to be moving to a way of funding new homes that relies on the future rents that they will get in from properties. The approach of allowing housing associations to build and charge 80% of market rents seems to relate to an argument about why capital grants are being reduced. My big problem with that approach is that I fear we are simply not going to build the type of housing that Londoners, including my constituents, can afford.
	I have done a bit of research on the average rents in Lewisham in the private rented sector and for housing association properties, and I have thus been able to work out what 80% of market rent would mean. At the moment, the average median rent for a one-bedroom flat in Lewisham is £170 a week and the rent in a housing association for such a property is about £80 a week. So an increase to 80% of the market rental value would make the cost £136 a week and would mean a weekly increase of about £55.
	That is bad enough, but the average market rent for a four-bedroom flat or house in Lewisham is £300 a week. Someone living in a similar London and Quadrant property would pay, on average, £114 a week. If London
	and Quadrant builds new homes in Lewisham and charges 80% of market rent, that figure would increase to £240 a week, which is an increase of about £125 a week. That represents a monthly increase of £500 and an annual increase of £6,000 in someone’s housing costs. If someone is lucky enough to be in full-time work in Lewisham and they are on the minimum wage, they will be earning less than £12,000 a year, so how on earth are they going to find £6,000 extra to pay towards their housing costs? I cannot see how that will happen and London Councils agrees with me. Its recent briefing produced for councillors in London on the affordable rent model states:
	“There is already a widespread recognition that the ARM will fail to deliver on larger sized family homes; and that, at 80% of market rates, the model’s maximum rent level will be unaffordable in the capital”.
	As I have mentioned, I am also concerned about families living in overcrowded situations. When they are offered a flat or house at 80% of the market rate, how are they going to be able to afford it? If they are going to have to pay an extra £6,000 a year, they are not going to move and so they are going to stay in the overcrowded flat that they are living in.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) discussed in an intervention the additional costs that could be pushed on to housing benefit, and that is precisely what the affordable rent model could result in. I recently read an interesting report by Family Mosaic entitled “Mirror, signal, manoeuvre: our drive to provide more social housing”. Family Mosaic did some research on about 50 of its new tenants who moved into properties across London at the end of last year. Some of those people were in work and some had caring responsibilities; the real-life situations of a vast range of people were researched when putting together that report.
	Family Mosaic estimates that if every one of those 50 individual households lived in a property at 80% of market rent, the housing benefit bill would increase by 151%. That is a huge amount of extra money that will have to go out in housing benefit and my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North is completely right to say that that is a way not of tackling the deficit but of making it worse.
	At the end of the report, Family Mosaic asks what we can do:
	“How do we go forward?”
	In answer, the report states:
	“To mitigate this risk”—
	the risk that people might not be able to afford the rents—
	“we could change the profile of our tenant group, and not let new properties to those most in need: this, however, goes against our core principles.”
	I am concerned about how the affordable rent model will deliver any homes in which people can afford to live.

Heidi Alexander: My hon. Friend is completely right. Our debate about what it is affordable to pay out in housing costs was interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North gave scenarios in which people might be spending 50% of their household income on their housing costs alone. I know that the Department for Communities and Local Government, in the guidance it published a number of years ago on how local authorities should carry out strategic housing market assessments—the Minister might wish to comment on this—says that the definition of affordable housing costs is if a household is paying 25% of its overall income on housing. We are clearly seeing situations in which households are paying much more.

Jeremy Corbyn: My hon. Friend makes a very important point and I have intervened on her now so that the Minister can have time to think about giving us an answer later. If a local authority ensures that an offer of a property is made at 80% of market rents and the family cannot afford to move into it, according to my understanding of the law the local authority will have discharged its duty to provide a property for those homeless people who would then have no access to any public sector housing. They would only be able to access a completely free-market private sector. We will end up building a sub-class of people who are unhouseable in law and homeless in reality.

Heidi Alexander: It is a complete trap. I look forward to the Minister’s response to that.
	I used some figures to demonstrate how much more people would have to pay out were they living in a family-sized property and being charged 80% of market rates. What concerns me more is the proposals for universal credit in this context and what the £26,000 will mean for people in London who are paying out such amounts of money in their housing costs.
	If we assume that the universal credit means that a family in London will get no more than £500 a week and that they are paying £240 a week for a four-bedroom flat at 80% of market rent in Lewisham, they will be left with £260 a week for all their other living costs. I presume that that £260 will cover their council tax benefit as well as payments for their gas, electricity and phone. We must also remember that if those people want to move into work, the costs of child care in the capital are much higher than elsewhere in the country and so are public transport costs. I therefore take this opportunity to ask the Minister to have conversations with his colleagues about how realistic the £26,000 universal credit cap is in a London context.
	I draw a distinction between London and the situation elsewhere in the country. I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) talk about his upbringing. My dad is an electrician. He has a nice house now. If he was an electrician in
	London, there is no way that he would live in the sort of house that he lives in now. He would tell me that £26,000 is a lot of money. His annual income has been about that figure for as long as I can remember. So I have some sympathy with what the Government are trying to do with welfare reform, but I ask them to consider carefully what that means for people in London. I have spoken a lot about figures, and they show how dreadfully difficult that reform could be for people who live in London on low incomes.
	If the Government do not think that families on low incomes should be able to live in London, they should come clean and say so, because that will be the result of their proposals and policies. We have talked about the impact of housing benefit changes and the potential clearance from London of people who simply cannot afford to live in their private rented properties. They will have to move either to the outskirts of London or elsewhere.
	Personally, I genuinely think that we must ensure that those people—my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) talked about them—who drive the lorries to clear our roads and who clean our offices and work in our shops can live close to their places of work. It is right to do that. It makes absolutely no sense for people to have to rely on the transport system, and it makes no sense to people’s lives when they have caring responsibilities and need to pick up their children from school. It is right that we have genuinely mixed communities of people able to live in central London. The proposals to change the welfare and housing benefit systems run a real danger of making that impossible in future.
	Before I move on from the wider changes to welfare reform, I want to pick up another point: the possibility of paying housing benefit directly to tenants so that they can pay it to their landlords. Housing associations in the capital have some concerns about that. I see where the Government are coming from, and it is right to make people realise and think about quite how much it costs to live in a property—encouraging individual responsibility is a good thing—but equally, housing associations tell me that this is the worst time that the Government could consider giving housing benefit and accommodation support benefit, even if incorporated in universal benefit, straight to tenants, because we all know that their household incomes and budgets are coming under extreme pressure.
	Housing associations also tell me that if rent arrears increase, they could find it harder to borrow money because their cash flow will be less secure. They are concerned that the banks will re-price their debts when they borrowed the money to build homes. I hope that the Minister will pick up on some of those concerns when he responds.
	I want to say a little about planning. I served on the Committee that considered the Localism Bill for a number of weeks, and I have a number of concerns about how the Bill’s proposals will impact on the construction of new affordable homes in London. I think the Chancellor said when he announced his Budget that there would be a presumption in favour of sustainable development, and that is completely at odds with what is said about planning in the Localism Bill. I am not saying that there are not occasions on which people should be able to say, “No, that development is not appropriate.” Indeed, there is a housing development
	like that in my constituency at the moment in a place called Pitfold close. It is right that local people should have a say about what happens in their neighbourhood, but what the Government propose, as many hon. Members will know, is the creation of neighbourhood forums that will be able to come up with neighbourhood plans. The Minister with responsibility for decentralisation, the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who was on the Bill Committee, seemed to think that those neighbourhood plans would always contain higher housing numbers than the strategic plan for the local area, but my experience of attempts to bring development forward is that local people often want to say no.
	I can understand people’s concerns about new homes. If a block of flats going up at the end of the road would cut out the sunlight to someone’s garden, I can understand why they might say, “I am not too happy about that.” I can understand why people might say, “How’s my child going to get into the new school?”; “How am I going to get on to the doctor’s or dentist’s list?”; or “What about all those cars coming down my road, blocking up the road network?” I understand why people are concerned about new development, but if we give too much power in the planning process to very small community groups in these neighbourhood forums, which it is proposed would include only three people, I am not sure that we will get the levels of house building in the capital that we need.
	While I am on the subject of planning, there was much debate in the Committee about the 50% target, whereupon the Minister would jump out of his seat and say, “Ah, well, even though you had the 50% target, Ken Livingstone delivered only 36%,” to which I would say that at least we tried. Setting that target and saying that we believe the provision of affordable housing is so important that half of all the new homes built in the capital should be affordable is the right message to send to developers and planning officers. When those planning officers sit down at the table and start their negotiations, they should be saying, “Ideally, we want 50% of new homes to be affordable.” Yes, there will be some situations in which it is impossible to do that because of the commercial realities of the scheme, but it is right to have that target.

Andrew Love: It is a delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander). I shall be interested to hear how the Minister responds to her devastating critique. I congratulate my very good friend the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). As he said, we go back a very long way. When I joined Haringey council many years ago, it was pronounced to me, as a new member, “Don’t worry; we’ve almost solved the housing waiting list problem in Haringey.” That was a year before Mrs Thatcher savagely cut housing investment programmes—and if I may say so, we appear to be going round the same cycle again.
	I want to focus on two main areas. The first is the local housing allowance changes and their impact throughout London. Secondly, I want to reiterate points that have been made by many other people, including my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East but also, very pleasingly, by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), on affordable housing and the problems that the new regime is creating. But before I do, I should like to give a brief overview of the housing situation in my borough, the London borough of Enfield.
	We suffer from extreme housing stress. Indeed, we are told that Enfield is the fourth most stressed housing authority in the country, and easily the most stressed in outer London. For owner-occupation, the cost of an average house in Enfield has tripled since 1995. That is not particularly exceptional for London. The price to income ratio is now 9—again, not exceptional, but it makes owner-occupation unaffordable for a very large majority of the people living in the borough.
	One in four of all households in Enfield are currently in receipt of some form of housing benefit. That is a 36% increase since 2005. There is some relatively good news, in the sense that the number of households in temporary accommodation has gone down from
	3,400 in 2006 to 2,300 in the latest year for which we have figures. Interestingly, that has happened mainly as a result of the deposit scheme that the previous Government introduced, which has made going into the private rented sector a good deal more secure than it was.
	Sadly, locally, overcrowding in the social sector, and particularly the council sector, has increased markedly in recent years. The most common form of overcrowding in the social sector is in two-bedroom properties, among families looking to move to three, four and five-bedroom accommodation. That is where the biggest overcrowding problem is, and I will return to that because it is critical to what we are discussing today.
	Others have already said that local housing allowances are very much a London issue. It is not just that rents are 50% higher in London than anywhere else, but also that the private rented sector is much more important in London than anywhere else. Enfield is not currently affected by the changes being made to the caps. I note from documents recently released that there is some transitional protection for those in the private rented sector in central London, but that lasts only until 2012, so we can see the nightmare looming on the horizon. Indeed, there are already signs of it: my local authority did a little survey of who was claiming housing benefit or local housing allowance, and 28% of recent claims were made by people coming into the borough from outside. A lot of them will not be from central London, but quite a lot of them will.
	London Councils estimates that more than 18,500 households will be affected by the changes, so we see that the changes could have a dramatic impact, not just in inner London—Members have spoken about the impact there—but in outer London. By 2016 quite a lot of outer-London boroughs will be unaffordable for tenants in the private rented sector. Quite a lot of boroughs will be affected, including Barking and Dagenham. In Enfield around three quarters of accommodation, mainly in the eastern half of the borough, will still be affordable then. Indeed, Enfield has estimated—I should probably say guesstimated—that upwards of 2,000 additional local housing allowance claims could be made following the ending of the temporary support for people on local housing allowance in central London.
	What impact would that have on Enfield? We discussed the subject earlier. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North mentioned that quite a lot of Islington tenants are temporarily housed in Enfield. I think the latest estimate is that more than 2,000—certainly a very significant number—of temporary accommodation tenants from other parts of London are housed in the London borough of Enfield. I mention that because if we have an influx as a result of the policies introduced by this Government, it will add quite a lot of pressure.
	The issue of school places in Redbridge was raised earlier; we already have an acute problem. We have knocked on the Government’s door, asking them to help us with primary school places. That will be another difficulty for us. Of course, additional demands will also be placed on social and welfare services. We have not been able to estimate locally what the impact would be on private sector rents, but if demand increases, rents are likely to go up. Will that lead to greater overcrowding? Possibly. Even though we have a better record on
	homelessness in our area, it is still very high locally. Of course, that will put additional pressure on the very limited social housing in the borough.
	I could talk about increases in poverty and deprivation. Many are concerned that with the changes in London, community cohesion is being strained to the limit. I would not subscribe to that view, but the significant movements that are going on are having an impact. Not all those impacts are caused by local housing allowance changes, but the changes will certainly exacerbate them.
	To pick up on a point that the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) put to Labour Members, what should we do? The first thing that we need to do is review the cap; it just does not make any sense for inner London. Setting the local housing allowance at the 30th percentile of rents will have a negative impact on London in particular, and the Government really need to look seriously at the implications of the local housing allowance changes that they are suggesting.

Andrew Love: Absolutely. That is the question that we wish to put to the Minister, and I hope that he will respond. We are not asking, “Have you taken housing benefit from someone who was receiving £100,000?” We would hope that that would be looked at carefully and sensibly, and we hope that if that was suggested, it would be done. What we are asking is why the Government are taking from families on low incomes in enormous housing stress and multiple deprivation their one lifeline of accommodation.
	Let me park that issue and move on to the next, which is ever so important—the supply of affordable accommodation in London. As has been said by everyone, it is obvious that we need to increase supply to tackle severe housing stress in London. Let me repeat something that was said earlier, now that the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth is back in the Chamber. She was asked how much grant funding had been slashed: it has been slashed by 63%, and how the Government can stand by and say that they can sustain the supply of affordable rented accommodation on the basis of a 63% cut beggars belief. Their argument is that the revenue from higher rents can be used to build houses that would not otherwise be built because grant is not available. The first thing that should be said about that is that the Homes and Communities Agency says that it will provide grant funding towards the building of accommodation, but only where the expectation—that is the word used— is that the rents will be close to the maximum 80%. It also says that the tenancy should be of two years or thereabouts. Therefore, it is looking to set conditions.
	What will be the impact of those changes? Everyone who has spoken from the Opposition Benches has already mentioned this, but I will say it again for emphasis. According to independent figures produced not by Opposition Members or Labour-dominated local authorities, but by independent commentators, in the year to 2011—before all this comes into place—there has been a 20% drop in housing starts. There is forecast to be a 40% drop between 2010 and 2013, and, as has already been said, because of the uncertainties and the dramatic change that is being brought in by the Government, the whole thing falls off a cliff after 2013. I hope that the Minister will give some reassurance that the Government are aware of that problem and will do something about it.
	I tried to get figures out of my local authority. It proudly proclaimed that in the years from 2008 to 2011 it would reach the target of building 648 new properties, but it takes a long time to build houses, so they were all built—if I may put it this way—under the administration of the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. It also tells me that a significant reduction is anticipated. It could not quantify that, and it is still early days to be able to do so, but the local authority was secure in the knowledge that the number would be significantly lower. Therefore, what credence can we give to the figures being produced by the Mayor of London, and what are the Government doing to address this problem?
	The problem with the slump in the supply of accommodation is the affordable rent model and the complex interaction between “affordable”—however that is defined; we seem to be redefining it continuously—and the introduction of universal credit in 2013. As background to this, in my local authority two thirds of all social
	tenants are on housing benefit, either partially or fully, so this affects a large proportion of my electorate. Comparisons of social rents with market rents show where the problem arises. In my local authority area, for one-bedroom accommodation it is 40% of the market rate, and for three bedrooms it is 33%. For RSLs, the equivalent figures are 45% and 41%. But on re-lets, where the rent goes up somewhat, it is 58% for one bedroom and 42% for three. It goes down even further for larger accommodation.
	I would like to spread a little good news to ease the situation for the Minister. Under the current rules, accommodation in Enfield is affordable, whether one is working or not. But as was mentioned earlier, under universal credit the figures will be capped at £500 a week. My local authority has worked out that if rents are set at 80%, as is being suggested, an average family, living in three-bedroom accommodation, will pay 46% of their universal credit in rent. They will have only 54% left for all the other necessities of life. If, on the other hand, we use the definition of affordability used by Enfield, and I think by many others, which is that no family should pay more than 30% of their income in rent, and no single person or childless couple should pay more than 35%, on a three-bedroom property they would pay only 52% of market rent. So there is a very stark choice for everyone.
	We do not yet know what the definition of “working” will be; it has been suggested that the cap might not apply to working households, but we do not know what “working” means. Many people in my constituency—and, I suspect, all over London—are in work, out of work, back in work and back out of work. How will it all pan out? I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government recognise the problem that I am trying to convey and have solutions to it.

Jane Ellison: Before I make my few remarks, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests. In case anyone is curious about it, I rent out the flat I lived in previously. I am in every sense a small landlord. It is slightly unhelpful that whenever people talk about landlords, they constantly refer to Rachman and the like; it has peppered this debate. There are lots of good small landlords, just as there are some good big landlords. It is important that we acknowledge that and do not descend into cliché.
	We have had a good debate. There are clearly some ideological differences across the Chamber and within parties, but we all know that there is an issue. Although the debate has been forced on us by circumstances, inasmuch as we appear to be almost the only MPs left in the building, it has been really useful to have a London-focused debate, because we all acknowledge that London is different. Indeed, it is unique.
	As the Member for Battersea, I welcome and enormously enjoy representing a genuinely mixed community. I want to continue to represent a mixed community. One of the great joys of London is the amazing mix of people. This morning, I was out at an unearthly hour delivering leaflets in my constituency and I noticed the extraordinary conjunction of posh flats, tower blocks and rows of terraced houses. It is one of the things that makes London amazing and it is an honour to represent a London constituency.
	I have a few remarks about a practical solution that my council, Wandsworth, has been putting into practice for some years. When I talk about the number of new homes created under the scheme, Members may think it is relatively small given the scale of need identified during the debate; nevertheless, it has brought real homes to real people in need over the last 10 years, and I take this opportunity to highlight it.
	The project is called the hidden homes programme. In 2002, Wandsworth undertook an enormous survey of all its properties and started the first hidden homes initiative. It is an odd title, because obviously the homes are not hidden; they were previously hidden, but they should now be called uncovered homes. Wandsworth undertook a survey of its entire estate and looked at the potential to bring back into use as homes all the rooms and spaces that were designed into the 1950s and 1960s blocks but are no longer needed—storerooms, laundry rooms, the big old boiler rooms, some unused garage spaces and so on. Many of those spaces are abandoned and, as we all know, places where antisocial behaviour lurks. The opportunity was there not only to create some new homes, but to design out crime from some of the estates.
	To date, Wandsworth council has built 183 affordable homes, latterly with a housing association partner. There is a potential programme to bring many more new dwellings on stream. Wandsworth estimates that around 10,000 such new homes could be created across London, and 70,000 nationally, if all councils replicated the programme. It means creating valuable additional housing units at relatively low cost because the land is already owned. The acquisition of land, which, as we all know, is one of the great hurdles in London because it is very expensive, is therefore not a problem, and the council can crack on with building.
	Planning permission is also relatively easy to secure. If a scheme is offered that could design out crime in areas where antisocial behaviour takes place, residents will greatly welcome that. Again, a box is ticked on that front. Another particularly positive aspect of the building programme is that it often involves valuable ground-floor and basement properties. Many of those who come to our surgeries have particular needs, which means that ground-floor accommodation in greatly in demand. Some properties have been designed and built from the start with adaptations for families that have a disabled member. The scheme therefore has many positives, and the accommodation has been provided quickly.
	Another nice aspect is that many properties are unique in character. As I was slotting a few leaflets through letterboxes this morning, I was thinking that, as many of us recognise, people in social housing have the same desire as anybody else to live in a unique home, which has character and perhaps some quirkiness, rather than something standardised and mass produced. Again, the scheme has much to offer.
	In 2006, Wandsworth council built almost half the new council homes in London through the scheme. It is important, and I understand that three other boroughs are considering it. Some are already some way down the line of looking to do the same on their estates. Wandsworth council has always said that it is happy to share ideas and expertise. Obviously, people learn along the way—it is not always plain sailing. Some of the adaptations— I have come across one or two in basements—have been challenging. However, expertise is available in identifying potential sites and putting together suitable packages.
	I encourage other Members to consider that approach in their authorities. As I said, some authorities are looking at the scheme, and it is well worth bringing it up and considering the potential. I do not pretend that it represents anything other than a small contribution towards solving London’s housing, but if it can be brought on stream quickly and relatively cheaply, what’s not to like?
	I want briefly to consider under-occupation. I thank the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing the debate, not least because, as a member of the Backbench Business Committee, I must say that it was not an easy day to offer to supplicant Members, either in Westminster Hall or the Chamber. There was not a huge queue for the day, so it was excellent that we could have the debate and that the hon. Gentleman secured it. However, I want to pick up on one of his points about people’s need for a civilised family life in the context of solving under-occupation. The right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) also mentioned that. More imaginative thinking is being applied to the matter. The problem cannot be solved by saying, “Here’s the number of people, here’s the number of rooms. That’s it.” Clearly, that will not work.
	We have talked about the needs of older people. We need to recognise that it might not be possible to persuade someone to move from a three-bedroom flat to a one-bedroom flat, but it might be possible to move someone from a three-bedroom flat to a two-bedroom flat with room for the grandchildren to stay or for someone who comes regularly to keep them company. Those things are really important. Many housing associations and the National Housing Federation are
	considering them and trying to encourage people to take that approach. They are not taking the one-size-fits-all approach.

Jane Ellison: I am not sure I entirely agree with that, if we are talking about older people and pensioners, in particular. Nevertheless, the housing associations are considering the matter, and it is something that we could all look to encourage as well.
	I want to deal with another matter that I feel strongly about and that has been alluded to already. I think that the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked why people are not angry or marching on Parliament and so on, given that so many people sign petitions about other things. There is a genuine problem in how we democratically represent the housing problem. One of the biggest challenges we face is that we often do not speak on behalf of the people who are not yet living in an area. The voices to which MPs and councillors listen—rightly—are those of the people already living in their areas. However, there remains a democrat deficit when it comes to speaking up for the people who want to live in an area but are not yet there. Naturally representatives will tend to voice the concerns of local residents.
	MPs and councillors have to set themselves a challenge. It was slightly naughty of the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) to suggest that nimbys are limited to any one party. I do not think that is true; there are nimbys across all parties, and probably, if we look to our own consciences, everyone at some point in their political lives has thought in their heart of hearts, “Hang on, actually there is a real need for this housing, but there is a huge local campaign against it.” Sometimes we have to take courage and say to someone, “No, I’m sorry, but there is a real housing need.” I did it recently at an exhibition on my patch. A lady was saying, “Oh, there are going to be too many houses and so on”, and I said, “I’m sorry, but there is a terrific housing need in London, and this is an urban area with brilliant transport links. This is a really great place to build some new homes. So I do support this building.” We have all got to be prepared to do that from time to time.
	On a tangential point in relation to what is happening today around the country, I voted no in the AV referendum this morning, mainly because I worry about encouraging blandness and people’s desire to try and please everybody. Sometimes we have to show leadership and be prepared occasionally to be unpopular, perhaps in the short term or with a particular group of residents. Giving political leadership means that occasionally we have to be prepared to go against the grain, and housing is a good example of an issue in which we should be prepared to do that. There are things we can do. We have to encourage great design and sensitive interaction with local residents. I have seen the amazing difference that it can make if the people who want to build have in place a good programme of communication, but I have also seen terrible programmes with really bad models and representations and in which people have been treated with arrogance. I have seen good and bad examples.
	We have to do much to convince people about designing out antisocial behaviour and crime. We all know that
	when we talk about building new blocks of social housing, some people worry that it will bring a disproportionate amount of antisocial behaviour.

Andy Slaughter: I have not read that particular book, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. In my constituency, we have what used to be called “homes for heroes” estates that were built after the first world war. There are also 1930s garden estates, such as the Wormholt estate in Shepherd’s Bush. Those are fantastic examples of social housing, but the Tory politicians always seem to overlook them when they are decrying social housing and social housing communities.
	Getting back to the subject of housing associations, I am going to read from the “Our history” page on the Notting Hill housing association website. Talking about how the association was set up, it says:
	“In 1962…our founder Bruce Kenrick…came to live in Notting Hill in West London. He was shocked by social and financial inequalities experienced by poor and immigrant communities in West London. He later wrote:
	‘What struck me painfully was the extent to which people’s problems stemmed from housing conditions. Marriages broke up because one or other partner could no longer stand the strain of living in one room with a stove and sink squeezed into one corner.’
	In December 1963 Bruce Kenrick, together with a group of equally committed individuals, formed a new, proactive type of voluntary housing organisation. Notting Hill Housing Trust was born. Within our first year, we had bought five houses and housed 57 people. Within five years, we had become a large presence in west London, housing nearly 1,000 people.”
	I shall refer to the Notting Hill housing association later in my speech, in a less flattering light. In those days, however, people aspired to build decent housing for the working poor, and indeed for the ordinary citizens of London.
	Twenty-five years ago—I think it was 25 years ago this week that I was first elected as a councillor in the London borough of Hammersmith—we had what we then thought was a housing crisis. Now, however, I think we would be quite grateful for the conditions that obtained then. It was a difficult time. Right to buy under the Thatcher Governments had depleted some of the best social housing stock, and problems of disrepair were growing yearly because of the neglect by Tory Governments and Tory councils of the council housing stock, which was already becoming a feature of the division between the political parties on this issue. Overcrowding was increasingly becoming an issue, too. Even in the mid-80s, however, it was possible to have hard-to-let properties; there was not the same degree of pressure or the same level of market rents or prices that forced people to live in ever-more overcrowded housing.
	I have glossed over the period of the Labour Government because it has already been dealt with. I will say, however, that I think it was a mixed record. Decent homes was a good programme, but I am not sure that the voice of London was heard strongly enough in those times. Decent homes became so much of a priority that housing supply, which is such a big issue for us today, did not get a fair crack of the whip. I recall that during some of the years when I was running a local authority, we tried by hook and by crook to build as many socially rented and intermediate homes as we could—and we succeeded as best we could—but housing supply remained a failure overall. I regret that. I believe that the last Prime Minister got it and I believe that the present Leader of the Opposition certainly gets it. Prime Minister Blair, however, did not get it when it came to the importance of housing, not just as a public service but as an important part of the country’s economy.
	With that brief history, we come to today. Other Members have mentioned the statistics, which are important. The housing waiting list in Hammersmith and Fulham is the highest I think it has ever been, with 9,361 households—more than 12%—on it, even though that is one of the smallest boroughs in London. Those figures are often manipulated. Over the recess, I spent some days on the public inquiry into the new core strategy —this is how I spend my leisure time—and found the council claiming that there were only 3,000 on the waiting list, which is only a third of the official figures according to the House of Commons Library.
	As I look down this list, I notice that the famous Tory boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth and Westminster appear to have low numbers on their waiting lists—just 4% and 7% of their populations. That is half or even a quarter of the figures for some of the Labour boroughs. It is not because there is no housing stress in those boroughs—on the contrary, there is; they have a worse record on the supply of affordable housing than most Labour boroughs—but because the lists are manipulated in a most unseemly way. People are discouraged in every way from going on the lists.

Andy Slaughter: It is anecdotal, but it is a consistent stream—from the year a Labour administration was elected in Hammersmith in 1986 when I recall that the response of Wandsworth council’s homeless person’s unit was to put up a map on the door outside, showing people in housing need the way to Hammersmith’s housing office, right through to the most recent Tory administration in Hammersmith, which makes people wait outside in the cold if they turn up out of hours. They used to be allowed to wait in the foyer of the town hall, but now, in case they offend or upset anybody, they have to wait outside, even in the middle of winter. As I say, those are anecdotes, but they tell a story. Some estates in my constituency have 20% overcrowding—eight times the national average, and it is a growing trend. That is the position on need.
	I do not pretend that it is easy to solve the problems created for low-income families in housing need by the price of land and the price of property. However, I do expect Governments to try to solve the problem, and if the present Government did try, they would have our support. I should like to see less partisanship, but I am afraid that this issue has become one of the most partisan of all.
	I have spent some years using the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to get various seedy hidden documents out of Hammersmith and Fulham council in order to discover what it really thinks of its tenants and what its real plans are. I was going to quote from some of them, but I think it more entertaining to quote from press releases issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government, particularly those issued in the name of a Liberal Democrat Minister. They say the same thing, only using more fantastical language.
	This is what the Government are offering people in housing need. They are offering “flexible tenure”:
	“Landlords will be given the freedom to offer their properties under fixed term tenancies, from a minimum of two years”.
	They are offering “affordable rents”, which is a new technical term:
	“Affordable Rent properties will offer fixed term tenancies at a rent higher than social rent - with landlords able to set rents at up to 80 per cent of local market rents.”
	It is a bit like tuition fees. I suspect that most landlords will go for the full 80% rather than for 40%, 60% or 70% when they set their rents.
	The Government are also offering
	“greater flexibility for councils to make decisions on how best to help people at risk of homelessness at the local level.”
	They say that
	“Currently some homeless families are turning down the decent private rented accommodation they've been offered as a settled home, and demanding to be provided with expensive temporary accommodation, at huge cost to the taxpayer, until a social home becomes available.”
	The scandal of it! It is no surprise that the Liberal Democrat Benches are empty. A Liberal Democrat Minister has said:
	“These changes will lead to a much smarter system”.
	As well as those three principles, there are a couple that the Government do not need to make law in the Localism Bill. As was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love), housing grant has already been cut by 63%. He also mentioned the changes in housing benefit. As I do not want to keep Members here all night, I will not go into the details.
	The cumulative effect of those five principles—giving councils flexibility to use the private rented sector, which means no more social homes as a permanent solution; flexible tenure, which means no security of tenure; affordable rents, which means no more affordable housing; no more capital investment; and the changes in housing benefit—will be that hundreds of families in all our constituencies will no longer be able to afford to live where their relations are, where their schools are and, in many cases, where their work is, and will have to move out.
	If it is allowed to develop over a period of years, the effect of those changes will be the end of social housing in this country. I say that not because I wish to be sensationalist, but because it is the inevitable conclusion, and, increasingly, the conclusion of experts. I think that the Government know what they are doing. I think that this is phase two of the desocialisation of the housing market which began with the right to buy, although this is a much deeper and more profound way of destroying a whole form of housing tenure.
	I can speak with some authority about that development, because I believe that much of it originated in Hammersmith and Fulham, the borough that I represent. A document entitled “Principles for Social Housing Reform” contained four of the five principles that I listed—although not the one relating to housing benefit—and was published a year before the last election. When I drew attention to it, I was told that I was scaremongering and that what I was saying was nonsense. The Minister for Housing and Local Government told me on many occasions in the House that this was not Tory policy and would not happen.
	The same discussions that led to the development of those principles led to the local policy in Hammersmith and Fulham, which was effectively a policy of removing the bulk of social housing tenants from the borough.
	An Evening Standard features article in the middle of 2009 stated:
	“Hammersmith and Fulham council is plotting a Dame Shirley Porter-style programme to move out the poor and replace them with private homes and retail developments…new homes will be built to attract residents with higher incomes and areas that have traditionally voted Labour will be broken up as more than 3,500 flats and houses are demolished…One document shows that if rents in Hammersmith were increased to private levels, a two-bed council flat currently costing £85 a week would go up to £360 a week.”
	I regret to say that all that is coming true in Hammersmith.
	I was amused to find that immediately after the election, in the first interview that he gave to a national newspaper, the Prime Minister singled out Hammersmith and said that he was angry about “appalling” Labour “lies” there. He said:
	“They were telling people in Hammersmith they were going to have their council house taken away by the Tories.”
	The only thing that we got wrong was that we did not realise that this was going to happen so quickly and that it was going to happen across the country. We certainly did realise what was going to happen in Hammersmith because we had seen the evidence on that.
	Three main local attacks are being used in Hammersmith, and some of them will be familiar to the shadow Minister because we all remember the days of Shirley Porter in west London. We thought that we had got rid of the terms “designated sales” and “building stable communities” in west London, but they have come back to haunt us. Some 64 council properties were sold up to last year, bringing in just over £30 million and, according to a decision taken this month, a further 300 will be sold to bring in a further £107 million. These will not just be sales of the largest properties; a range of sizes will be involved, with one, two, three and four-bedroom flats being sold. As hon. Members will see, these properties will be expensive, selling for about £500,000 each in many cases. More than 9,000 families are on the waiting list, so what is the purpose of deciding to sell 300 to 400 of the council’s best properties? These will be not be sales of estate properties; they will be sales of street properties, which command very high values in Hammersmith and Fulham.
	In discussing the second principle, I shall again talk a little about housing associations. For some years we thought that housing associations would save us from the ideologically driven policies of Tory councils and that associations such as Notting Hill Housing Association and Shepherds Bush Housing Association, the two largest in my constituency, would perform that role. As I said, Notting Hill Housing Association was set up, following the Rachman era, to perform that role and ensure that good quality, affordable housing was available.
	I shall read just a few sentences from the NHHA’s response to the Government consultation paper proposing the social housing changes. It states:
	“We are likely to grant 2 year tenancies to all new tenants of both new homes and existing homes that become available for new letting.”
	It goes on to say:
	“In appropriate cases we would like to be able to increase rents up to market rents for those who can afford them.”
	It also says that
	“we may want to sell some voids, or to let them on full market rents”.
	It continues:
	“The new flexibilities will also enable us to support boroughs’ efforts to create more mixed communities”—
	that phrase again—
	“reducing the concentrations of deprived often unemployed people found in areas of social housing in London.”
	The NHHA response continues:
	“we see no need for the Government to specify that particular groups of tenants such as older people or people with long term illnesses or disabilities must be provided with a social home for a longer period than the two year minimum.”
	Finally, and perhaps most poignantly of all, given the history of the NHHA:
	“We support the proposal…that local authorities should be given greater flexibility in bringing the homelessness duty to an end with offers of accommodation in the private rented sector.”
	What I find particularly objectionable about that is, as I said in an intervention, that these organisations were set up purely to provide good quality affordable housing to people.
	The chief executive of Notting Hill Housing, who featured in the popular press over the last weekend and previously along with her partner, who was director of housing and regeneration for Hammersmith and Fulham, earns £200,000 a year, whereas he earns £260,000 a year as a consultant. Their jobs have been to run the two main social landlords in Hammersmith and Fulham and they are also the advisers to the Conservative party who contributed to the document “Principles for Social Housing Reform”. So far, he, Mr Nick Johnson, has been paid more than £830,000 as a consultant and director of regeneration in Hammersmith and Fulham.

Andy Slaughter: It seems okay to me.
	Mr Johnson is in charge of some of the most controversial and largest developments not just in this country or in Europe but across the world—that is, the opportunity area schemes in Hammersmith and Fulham that will see the demolition of thousands of units of good quality social housing and their replacement with luxury high-rise housing, principally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) said, for the benefit of people living abroad who wish to have a pied-à-terre somewhere near central London.
	I have spent many days in the public inquiry dealing with this matter and I shall try not to bore Members with the subject for too long. The core strategy documents, which hon. Members will all have in their various boroughs, are interesting reading if one sits down with them. The housing policy in the Hammersmith and Fulham core strategy, which is the planning document that is supposed to last us for 20 years, states:
	“The Council would prefer all additional affordable housing to be intermediate housing unless a small proportion of new social rented housing is necessary in order to enable proposals for the regeneration of council or housing association estates”.
	That was amended during the public inquiry to add the words “and affordable rented housing”. That is a bit of a give-away that the Minister might want to blush about. In other words, all the time that the definition of affordable housing was social housing, the council wanted none of it, but as soon as it became 80% of market rent, it was happy to include it in its planning documents. That exposes what so-called affordable housing is about.
	I am dealing with dozens of those schemes across the constituency, but let me mention just three of them. There are three opportunity areas in the borough. There are 30 of those large London plan schemes—roughly one per borough—but we have three of them in Hammersmith and Fulham, even though it is one of the smallest and most densely populated boroughs. One of them covers Earls Court and West Kensington, where the proposal, apart from knocking down the historic exhibition centres, is to demolish 750 newly modernised, good quality and popular council homes, half of which are terraced or semi-detached three or four-bedroom houses with garages and gardens, so that they can be replaced with 7,500 luxury flats in blocks up to 30 storeys high. That is described as four villages and a high street. I went to the architect’s premises to look at the plans. He had given nicknames to the high street and the other road that will be built—one was Sloane street and the other was South Molton street—and that is where the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates are at present.
	Of those 7,500 homes, the only social rented homes will be for tenants who are displaced because their homes have been demolished who insist on having a new home in the area. I believe that about 250 such homes will be built, and they will be built conveniently just outside my constituency, so that those people will not be able to vote for me anymore.
	The White City opportunity area is much larger. It is the area around the BBC site in which at least another 4,000 homes will be built—again, in blocks 20 to 30 storeys high. The planning document contains a little orange circle where it says, “This is where we are going to build just over 1,000 social rented homes.” That sounds like quite an attractive prospect, until one finds out that those homes will be built so that tenants can be moved from the 2,400 homes on the White City, Batman Close and Wood Lane estates in another part of Shepherd’s Bush. In other words, without saying anything about what will happen to the nearly 2,500 families who live on those estates—the document is silent on that—more than 1,000 homes will be built to rehouse them. Well, I might not be Inspector Clouseau, but I can work out that once those families are moved into those 1,000 homes, the leaseholders have been bought out and other people have been discouraged from living in the area, the bulldozers can then go into the White City estate, which is the largest estate in my constituency.
	The most controversial site is Hammersmith town centre and riverside, which includes the listed town hall, cinema and flats owned by the Pocklington Trust, which is a trust for people with visual impairments. Again, the ambition is demolition and to build 320 luxury flats and a footbridge over the A4 that will take out a third of the riverside park, so that Malaysian investors can have somewhere with direct access to the riverside to put their money into and perhaps come to when they are in Hammersmith. How that is conceived as providing for all the needs—let alone the housing needs—of my constituents I do not know.
	Council officers proudly told me that the Earls Court development is the largest one of its kind—I think that they mean by value—outside China. They are very proud of that. What those developments have in common is that they face the unanimous opposition or near-unanimous opposition of residents and that the council is co-developer. The planning authority is the developer in each case, and hon. Members can imagine how planning committees go in that context.
	The key point for today’s debate is that there is no affordable housing—not one new unit of affordable housing, by which I mean social rented housing. As London citizens will say, the only type of housing in London boroughs such as mine that is affordable to people on the London living wage, which is now almost £8 an hour, is social rented housing. That is what there is a need for. Of course, we need other types of housing as well, but they are easier to provide. The function of government is to provide for unmet needs, but those unmet needs are not being provided for. On the contrary, the whole thrust of policy—not just in Hammersmith, although it is more obvious in Hammersmith—is to reduce the quantum of social rented housing, to stop the construction of new social rented housing and in that way to change the nature of housing tenure across inner London.
	What is the motivation for that approach? If I am right about this, and I think I am because I have spent a lot of time looking at it, the first motivation of those—principally Conservative, although we must now associate the Liberal Democrats with them—politicians is economic. A phrase that I hear from Conservatives in my area is “sweat the asset”, and a memorable comment from the leader of the council is, “We want to attract people to
	the area who are very rich.” I think that such people see council houses with affordable rents, on what would otherwise be very expensive land, as an affront to them economically. They think, “This is not what should be done with this piece of land. What we should have here is a 30-storey, Singapore-style tower block or a conference centre or office block. What we should not have is low to medium-rise housing built in the same style as the rest of the district when it was created in the Victorian era.”
	The second motivation is, I think, a social agenda. Estates are described in the most disparaging terms in official council documents—as “not decent”, or “inward-looking”. I know that Tory politicians are often not comfortable with council estates, but I do not know whether that is because they think the people who live on them vote Labour or because they do not like the collective ideals that built them. Perhaps they do not like the communities who live there, but they could at least leave them alone. Those communities are often the opposite of inward looking: they are some of the most diverse and cohesive in the country and now, partly because of housing policies, they are among the most stable in the country, but they are pilloried in that insulting language.
	The third motivation is a personal objection to people who live on council estates. If hon. Members do not believe me they should go back and look at some of the election literature and what was said in Hammersmith and Fulham about dependency culture and how living in subsidised housing with security of tenure makes people flaccid and unambitious. Some politicians think that such people need a touch of iron and that we should go back to the more competitive and animalistic culture that the Conservatives would like us to have.

Karen Buck: I begin, as many others have done, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on introducing the debate. How the years slide by, and I think of the first time that we spoke in the Chamber on housing in London, joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and others, who have all been habitual attendees of housing debates. How we wish that the problems that we were so exercised about in 1997 were the problems that we face now.
	I am also delighted to place on the record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue on the Floor of the House. We often have our debates in Westminster Hall, but it is important to be able to use the main Chamber to reflect on an issue that is so important to many of us. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said that we so often address with great passion the welfare concerns involved in education and health policy, but housing, which is at least as critical and stands alongside those issues in importance, tends to be marginalised.
	I thank the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) for making an important point. She said that London was often not understood in the context of national politics. Although, sadly, there are housing pressures and problems in every part of the country, London is unique and faces particular cost pressures. It is good that we have had an opportunity to bring London Members together to talk about London problems, but we want colleagues from other parts of the country to hear more about why London is different and why the pressures are so intense here.
	We have heard outstanding speeches from Opposition Members. I am thinking of my right hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), for Eltham (Clive Efford), for Hammersmith, for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), for Edmonton (Mr Love) and for East Ham—

Karen Buck: My hon. Friend is right, and that is extremely sad. In some cases, there appears to be a deliberate straying away from the original aims and objectives; in others, the kind of thing that he describes is a response to the constraints under which housing associations now operate.
	All my right hon. and hon. Friends critiqued aspects of Government policy. A number of them drew particular attention to the risks inherent in the cuts to the local housing allowance. We heard from Government Members extreme examples of high-cost private sector tenancies. We agree. Indeed, the Labour manifesto stated that measures would be taken to deal with some of those extremely high costs. I completely accept that, but if it was the objective of Government policy why was it not confined to tackling the relatively small number of high-cost cases? I think I am right in saying that the Government have not even been able to tell us how many, if any, properties cost than £100,000 a year, yet throughout the country—not just in London—nearly 1 million households will have their local housing allowance cut.
	My hon. Friends the Members for West Ham and for Edmonton raised concerns about what would happen when people are displaced, particularly from the central London broad market rental area where only 5% of accommodation will remain affordable, and a knock-on displacement moves those families to highly stressed, poorer communities on the fringes of London and beyond. Many Members talked about social housing investment and tenure, and I shall return to those issues briefly.
	We heard thoughtful and reasonable contributions from Government Members. I single out particularly the hon. Members for Ealing Central and Acton and for Battersea (Jane Ellison), not least because they are still here. They made good points. In some cases, there is shared understanding of the impact of the housing shortage, particularly in central London.
	From the hon. Ladies and from the hon. Members for Hendon (Mr Offord), for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), we heard support for Government policy on market rents and the end of security of tenure, which it is asserted, without significant evidence, will deal with the shortage of social housing that we are all concerned about. Frankly, that assertion is a triumph of hope over experience, and I shall spend a moment or two deconstructing it.
	I am sorry that the hon. Member for Hendon is no longer in the Chamber. He revealed a little of the attitude towards social housing and social tenants that permeates so much of the Government’s thinking about the problem. It seems to believe that secure and affordable social housing traps individuals in deprivation and unemployment, and the language of welfare dependency reinforces that belief. However, as several of my hon. Friends said, the fact that social housing is now such a scarce resource means that people with social problems are concentrated in it. Far from being the problem for many vulnerable and poorer families, it is an essential part of the solution.
	We all agree that the problems facing social housing in London are complex, long term and difficult to resolve. Anyone who claims to have a magic bullet is lying. We know that the supply of social housing has been squeezed for decades, principally through the non-replacement of right-to-buy stock during the 1980s and 1990s, but in retrospect it is a shame that more properties were not built under the Labour Government, as several of us have pointed out. It would be hypocritical of me not to say that, as I lined up many times during the Labour Government to make exactly that point. However, as has been said, we can be proud of the substantial investment made during those years in the decent homes initiative, which brought millions of homes to a decent standard.
	The decline in supply is not the only problem. London is a global city; foreign, national and business money distorts the market, and the fact that house prices have risen so much over the decades has its consequences. One striking issue about social housing is that between 10 and 15 years ago there was a steady outflow of tenants buying their home, sometimes through right to buy but often in the private market, which has effectively silted things up, as people on modest incomes are no longer able to afford a house. The relationship between the private housing market, owner-occupation and the
	social market must be properly understood. The Labour Government invested in decent homes and new buildings, so by 2009, the lead-in time for planning and investment led to a high of 16,000 starts in London. We now know that that was the golden age.
	The coalition Government have a package of investment and policy suggestions, which are likely to combine to cancel out almost all the hoped-for objectives. They want more social homes—don’t we all?—but they have made, as we heard, a 63% cut in the affordable housing grant. Consequently, the 16,000 starts peaked in 2009-10 and will fall away to nothing, according to the Homes and Communities Agency, in 2012. The Government want housing benefit to take the strain—to fill the gap in the affordable housing grant—but they also want housing benefit expenditure to fall. Those two things are incompatible.
	The Government want to improve work incentives—don’t we all?—but they propose 80% market rents, which will make work incentives much harder to achieve. If it is hard to make work pay when rent is £100 a week, how much harder will it be when rent is £400, £500 or £600 a week? They want more social homes, particularly, as the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton said, more family-sized homes, but the overall benefit cap means that housing developers and housing associations do not want to build family-sized homes. The set of policies is completely incoherent. Something has to give.
	The Government want mixed communities—don’t we all?—but they suggest throwing people out of their homes when they achieve a certain amount of income. What could be a worse work disincentive than saying, “If you earn a certain amount of money, you’ll be out on your ear”? What nonsense that makes of the concept of mixed communities. However, the Mayor of London proposes a £60,000-plus ceiling for access to socially assisted housing, which cuts across the stated objective of not allowing people with a decent income to be assisted with housing.
	The Government want to tackle under-occupation—don’t we all?—but they are doing so in a way that possibly even some of my hon. Friends have not yet fully internalised. They propose doing so through a cut in housing benefit for social tenants who have one or more bedrooms more than they are deemed to need. That will hit 150,000 London households with an average of a £21-a-week loss in benefit. I do not have the London figures to hand, but I know that, nationally, if every single person affected by the proposed cut in housing benefit tried to avoid that penalty, it would mean that every one and two-bedroom property allocated in the social housing sector for the next five years would have to go to those households. That is clearly nonsense and would lead to a catastrophe of homelessness and overcrowding. Indeed, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) let the cat out of the bag by making it clear that the policy’s intention is not to tackle under-occupation, but to save money. As far as the Government are concerned, the fewer people who move, the better.
	The Government also want to end security of tenure. When I, like my hon. Friends, was on the campaign stump last year, and warning people that a Conservative Government would mean a move to market rents and the end of security of tenure, we were howled down and
	accused of lying. Our only error in robustly defending that position was not realising how quickly it would happen.
	I have been remiss in not making the point earlier, but shadow Communities and Local Government Ministers, who are out campaigning today, are rightly opposing those measures in the Localism Bill.
	The Government’s policy is fundamentally flawed and deeply incoherent. It will have the opposite effect, almost across the board, to what it seeks to achieve. At the very least, we know that the Mayor of London’s re-election campaign is on a cliff edge as new housing supply drops to nothing. We therefore look forward to a campaign that will replace the Mayor, who has talked the talk, but is not walking the walk. He will not deliver new social housing; he is not standing up for London tenants or those who face a housing crisis.
	Although the crisis has been long building and slow burning, it is reaching one of the most critical points that I have ever known. Whether for people in social housing, people in the private sector waiting to obtain social housing, those in the queue or those facing homelessness, it is clear that the Government’s policies will do nothing to resolve that crisis. It will take a Labour Mayor and a Labour Government to resolve the crisis of social housing in London.

Bob Neill: I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but two things have to be recognised. The first is the acceptance in his party’s manifesto that the current model of dealing with housing benefit was not sustainable. Secondly, I will go into this in a little more detail in a moment—I hope that he will forgive me if I return to it in the order that it appears in my speech—but there remain significant numbers of houses in London that are affordable. It cannot be sustainable for people who happen to be in receipt of housing benefit who can afford houses not to have to make the sometimes difficult choices that people in work at lower wages have to make.
	I will return to the detail later, because there are some useful points to make. However, it is also worth saying something else—something that I am sure the hon. Gentleman and others will reflect on. I put this as gently as I can to Opposition Members, but they are not really in a position to criticise this Government for trying to do something to deal with the housing crisis in London when they left us in such a heaven’s awful mess in the first place. We heard a grudging acceptance that
	things were not quite right from some Opposition Members, including one or two who served in the previous Government, but let us put things where they are: the lowest levels of house building in peacetime since 1924; social housing waiting lists at record levels; 250,000 families in social housing living in overcrowded conditions; and—this is a particularly worrying factor—only half of social tenants of working age in work.
	That is the inheritance that this coalition Government are trying to pick up, and at a time when there is less money available from the public finances, because of the economic mess that the previous Government left behind. I can understand that people such as the hon. Member for Islington North, who have been consistent in their criticism, are entitled to make the points that they do. However, there are other Opposition Members who—if I may politely say so—have selective memories, and I am not prepared to brook criticism from that source.
	There is some common ground between us, however, solet us look at what we need to do. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) talked about the need to increase supply, which is obviously right. We need to increase supply right across the types of tenures that are available, because the complexity of the London housing market is such that there is no single bullet. That point is right, and I will deal with it later. We also need to look at flexibility in social housing, which includes the questions of tenure and so on. There is probably common ground there, too. We also need to accept that there is an obligation to protect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged—something that I also want to touch on.
	On the first point, about supply, I am not going to rehearse the rights and wrongs of our disagreement with Labour about the targets approach to the delivery of housing. We know where the previous Government stood; Labour Members know where we stand. However, at the end of the day, there was a failure to deliver an adequate supply of housing. We are determined to take steps to address that, which is why we are seeking to incentivise housing right across the board. That is why the new homes bonus is an important factor in again giving communities a real stake in giving permissions. That will be important in dealing with the reluctance of some communities previously to accept needed development because they felt that they had no stake in it and that it had been imposed on them without having a proper say-so. That is why we propose to reform the community infrastructure levy and turn it into a localised tariff, so that—to deal with the point that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made—the community that receives development has a means of getting back a meaningful proportion of the planning gain arising from it.
	Those are some important supply-side issues, but we are also setting aside £1 billion over the comprehensive spending review period for the new homes bonus scheme—I would politely point out to the hon. Member for Edmonton that the first £200 million, in the first year, is additional money from the Treasury. We seek to incentivise those authorities that are prepared to accept necessary and sustainable growth. We are investing a further £6.5 billion in housing, which includes more than £2 billion to make existing social homes decent and nearly £4.5 billion in new affordable housing to help to deliver up to 150,000 affordable homes. There is therefore significant investment taking place, against a background of seeking to pay down the debts that we inherited as a Government.
	Those are supply-side issues that we are seeking to deal with, but the other key issue to the supply side is getting the economy right. Ultimately, confidence has to be restored to the markets, so that people start lending and builders can build once more. Getting the economy right—on which the Opposition have not been exactly supportive of the Government so far—is key, too.

Bob Neill: It is not a gimmick; it is a holistic solution. With respect, the hon. Lady is making exactly the error that Labour Members sometimes make, which is to pluck out social and affordable housing policy and to treat it as though it were separate from the rest of the housing market. Everything is interlinked, however, and the key objective is to increase supply across the board. An increase in supply will lead to greater mobility of people, which will free up accommodation in the often hard-pressed social rented sector.
	I want to turn to the changes to flexibility in rents and market rents. Those proposals have been made because affordable rent is a less grant-dependent system than previous models. Criticism has been made about the grant, but we have had to reflect the fact that money is limited because of the mess we inherited. We have moved to a model that we think is proportionate and less grant intensive, in order to make better use of the money. This also recognises the reality that we need to encourage housing associations. I am sorry that there has been a degree of criticism of housing associations. They vary; in my experience as a London MP, I have found that some are very good, and others less so. It is wrong, however, to denigrate the whole sector, just as it would be wrong to denigrate the whole private landlord sector. Lest I forget, let me place on record the fact that my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests refers to a single property from which I receive some income.
	If we are to generate income for reinvestment in new affordable housing, there has to be an income flow into the housing associations. Because of the mess that we inherited, that cannot be entirely dependent on Government grant, so it is necessary to get that money from somewhere else. That is why we believe that an affordable rent model will lead to more houses being built, and more households being able to access the benefits of what is still a sub-market rent.
	We are all concerned about the specific situation in London, which is why we are devolving the Homes and Communities Agency’s powers to the Mayor. The Mayor has raised issues about the way in which he intends to operate these functions in London, and we will look at the flexibility of that. We will also look at the responses of various associations, and the Minister for Housing and Local Government will respond to those in due course. That is why I will not go into that matter further at this stage.
	It is important to recognise that the housing policy spend in London is significant, and that the Mayor has already established a good track record in this area. He
	is on track to deliver 50,000 affordable homes by the Olympics, but he has been up front and said that, because of the economic situation, that might have slipped by a year. However, he preferred to be honest and say that it had slipped a year because of external economic factors, compared with the previous Mayor, who set a 50% target that was not met in any of the eight years that he was in office. The best he achieved was 34%, so Mayor Johnson is much more on track than his predecessor. He has also recognised that we will need transitional arrangements to deal with the issues arising from the change to an affordable rent model in the sector.
	The reform of tenure was recognised before the election by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), in one of the periods when she was off the Front Bench, as an issue that needed to be tackled. In that context, existing tenants will be protected. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that, if we are to encourage a more flexible supply of tenure, people who go into a new tenancy should do so in the knowledge that, if circumstances change, it will be appropriate to review that provision.

Jeremy Corbyn: In closing the debate, I would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for allotting us the time for it. There was initially some doubt about whether sufficient London Members would attend the debate and whether it would last the full time allotted to it. We have been proved wrong on that, as many Members —14, I believe—have spoken and put many valuable points on the record.
	I would like to thank both Front-Bench teams. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for her fantastic record on housing. The fact that she is still a Member after the last general election is because of her record on housing and her support for the people in her community. I would also like to thank the Minister not only for the manner of his reply but for the fact—unprecedented in my experience of watching Ministers in operation—that he has been in his place throughout the whole debate and listened to every speech. He will have heard the passion and commitment shown by many Members on housing issues.
	Let me remind the Minister of these points. None of them are new; housing issues are not new; the passion and commitment of London MPs to social housing
	issues in London is not new—and it will not finish with today’s debate, as we will be back, back and back again because we passionately believe that everyone deserves somewhere decent to live and we passionately believe in cohesive communities.
	When the Minister goes away from this debate, I would like him to reflect on four points on which he could take action. First, he should re-examine what is happening with the housing allowance, how it has been imposed and how families have been forced out of their communities, creating a huge problem that is hitting people in areas such as the one that I have the privilege to represent.
	Secondly, I accept that not every private landlord is a bad landlord—but there are some bad landlords and some badly maintained properties. Private tenants pay more than others for heating, lighting and everything else because the homes are often badly maintained and inefficient—not all, but quite a lot are.
	Thirdly, the Minister should recognise that the housing needs of London are special and that if we do not recognise them we will end up with a divided, inefficient, ineffective city. I do not want that; the Minister does not want that; nobody in the Chamber wants it.
	Lastly, I ask, please, for money in the form of investment in good homes for a good future for our young people. It is better to put the money in bricks and mortar than to subsidise private rents. That has to be the way forward. London can do it, but we need the Government’s recognition and support if we are to succeed.
	Question put and agreed  to .
	Resolved ,
	That this House has considered the matter of social housing in London.

Bob Neill: The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible point. Obviously, we need to consider what resources are required when we find out what the regulations require. I shall link that point to the one made by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test about regulation 669. I will certainly ensure that my officials talk to officials at the Department of Health, and I will correspond with my opposite number there, so that such things are all considered together. There, too, is the opportunity to consider whether the burden is appropriately addressed in the current circumstances. So it is sensible to look at that in the round, as both hon. Gentlemen suggest.
	In terms of the broader aspects of the funding, formula grant has so far been a tried and tested means of financing local authorities. There is also the ability to levy a precept, which will vary slightly according to the composition and responsibility of each port health authority. I know too, as I am sure the hon. Member for Southampton, Test does, that in certain circumstances there is a power for the authority to make a charge to recover the cost of providing a service to a user of the port, so there are some flexibilities.
	In a broader context, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will know that the Government are commitment to consulting over the summer and taking forward a review of local government resourcing, which will include the operation of the business rates. Port authorities and port operations are often significant contributors to business rates within their areas and are important economic hubs. Of course, the outcome of that review might influence the approach that we adopt to formula grant as a whole. Formula grant started life as part of the business rate that was being recycled, but life has become rather more complicated than that in local government finance. However, the review gives us an opportunity to look holistically at the relationship with the grant. I cannot make promises about what the
	outcome of the review will be, but I can promise the hon. Gentleman that I can, as a result of this debate, take steps to ensure that the impact of any change on port health authorities is taken into account. I accept that many people might not realise their dependency on formula grant, and that this issue could fall between the ship and the quayside—that seems an appropriate analogy—but I would not want that to happen.
	I hope that my comments have given the hon. Gentleman some indication that the Government are prepared to engage on this issue. We think that port health authorities fulfil a valuable role, and I pay tribute to their staff. He is right to say that they are on the front line, and they give a pretty cost-effective service.

John McDonnell: It would not be worth living back in Hillingdon if I did not raise this point on behalf of the borough. In the review of wider business rates, it would be invaluable to assess not just the implications of the cost of the control of port health—particularly with regard to passengers, but also in relation to the import of goods—as well as the knock-on effects of having a port within a local authority area. I give as an example the role of health and social services in relation to giving support when passengers who have particular needs arrive at Heathrow airport or another port. In addition, in relation to any goods that are brought into an area where a particular issue arises, the local authority has to exercise a wider environmental health role. That needs to be reflected in any future review of grants to local authorities and the use of business rates.